The Best & Only Equipment you need to carry for any Smartcar

Sounds like a lot of expensive and unnecessary work. Years ago I got myself a floor jack from Walmart. It was something like $20? Still works fine today on my smarts and Volkswagens. For a spare tire I use a steel front wheel from a 450. I then stuff that wheel behind the driver seat. It's as thin as a regular donut spare but has a real tire and can go highway speed. The compressor in the passenger footwell is more than enough to pump up tires in all of my passenger cars. I just leave it in the boot with the floor jack instead of putting it back in the footwell.

Maybe I'm missing something, why get 17mm lug bolts? I've never found the 15s to be a problem.

There was a guy that made neat spare tire carriers for smarts many years ago, but not enough people bought them. These are niche cars and specialty products for niche cars are going to be pricey.

I totally agree with you. smart cars are great if you use them for their intended purpose of driving in the city and using the fix a flat and portable air compressor to get you to a gas station to fix or replace a flat. However my primary car is a 2014 KIA Optima that also did not come with a spare and are given the same repair kit as the smart car does and a 1-800 number to call if you get a flat. Living in colorado it is a 12 hour drive to Vegas through Utah, where there are no gas stations for hundreds of miles. I got a blown tire about 4 hours from Salt Lake City, I was unable to fix the flat with the repair kit so called the number to Kia. It was nearly 2 hours waiting in the hot 90 degree weather for a tow truck, then it was about another 90 min doing paperwork and connecting the car and driving to a service station that could not get to me for another hour, and overcharged me on my tire and said I had to replace the other tire also since it was shop policy not to sell one tire if the other one does not have enough tread. My long point being, is it is foolish to buy a car if you only plan on driving it in the city, and I wish I had your floor jack and a spare tire in my car when my tire blew. I immediately bought a half tire for my Kia which included a jack. it just didn’t seem to make sense that there was not a jack for a smart car that you could carry with your spare, and even if you had found one all of the lug wrenches they sell are for the smallest being 17mm, so the15mm bolts on the tire are usually unbreakable without a lug, (which is why there are a lot of posts for people that want to just spend $20 to get 17mm bolts so they can carry any standard lug wrench. I just wanted to give smart car owners an option to buy a collapsable lug wrench that uses a 15mm socket. I workout 5x a week and I seriously would not have been able to break the bolts free just using a 15mm socket Wrench. It is good that you feel you have everything you need to service your car. I am just someone who likes to have all my options presented to me, and doesn’t buy into the philosophy that you can live without a spare because there is a fix a flat and air compressor in the car. You probably also knew that using the fix a flat to seal a leak will also damage the air sensor in the tire and they charge $60 for a new sensor when they fix or replace your flat tire at tire repair shop and won’t repair the flat unless it is working properly. All in all I personally would rather spend $100 for a jack and lug wrench and air compressor to fix a flat if I am ever on the highway stranded again with no cell service, then spend valuable time and money being towed and forced to buy a tire that may not be identical to one that blew. Even if you carry a spare just to have them put on, you are still waiting for a tow truck when you can change it yourself 30 minutes.

I recently drove down to Tennessee from Illinois for an offroad rally and amusingly, I needed both the sealant and my 450 spare. I completely blew one tire on a rock, which made me put my spare into service. I repaired the slashed tire with a tire plug and a lot of sealant. Thankfully I didn't need to use that tire again. Whew!

My confusion is with the part about going up to 17mm bolts because lug wrenches don't come in 15mm. I got a ~$10 metric deep socket set from Harbor Freight with a breaker bar. Makes short work of the lug bolts and I'm not even that strong. Plus, the breaker bar can be used for a plethora of diy repairs like doing your own brakes, which a lug wrench would not be useful for.

OH!! And I just thought of something. There is a way you can get a rear spare tire carrier! Get a tow hitch installed (U-Haul should still do it) then nab one of those hitch-based spare tire carriers off eBay.